The EPA should not permit mining operations based on regulatory loopholes and lax enforcement practices that have allowed mountain waterways to be treated as waste dumps. The people in Appalachia, like all Americans, have a right to clean streams, rivers, and drinking water — and it’s up to the EPA to look out for their interests. Today the agency fulfilled that duty, and now we expect the EPA to follow-up with the necessary actions to end — not to mend — the practice of mountain removal. Rob Perks, a blogger at the National Resources Defense Council , September 11, 2009.

People in Appalachia have lived and worked with coal for generations. Mining communities have endured countless struggles and tragedies associated with harsh conditions of mining underground and also with harsh environmental results of strip mining.

Since the 1970s, scientists, politicians and voters have debated economic, environmental and health effects of reliance on coal-fired energy. In 2006, Appalachians witnessed the Sago Mine underground disaster in West Virginia (photo, left), in which 13 men were trapped for two days and all but one lost their lives.

Now concerns are growing about about impact of the latest coal-mining method on water quality. This method is known as mountaintop removal.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R: Columbia, SC) — actual name Addison Graves Wilson Sr. — received 40% of his campaign money from PACs. Wilson yelled “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during the President’s address to Congress on health care reform.

Joe Wilson voted for illegal migrants’ healthcare before he was against, took drug company campaign contributions, and sponsored an earmark to give taxpayers’ money to a pharmaceutical industry project.

Wilson’s top donors include major drug companies: Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals, Glaxosmithkline, Novartis, and Eli Lilly. Among his other corporate sector donors are lobbyists for insurance companies, the beer industry, auto dealers, and the defense industry.

In 2003, Rep. Wilson voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. This landmark legislation provides seniors and individuals with disabilities with a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. But it has also been criticized for securing “big benefits for Big Pharma & the private insurance industry at the expense of real benefits for seniors.”

The 2003 act, for which Wilson voted under President George W. Bush, includes Section 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually of taxpayer money to reimburse hospitals for treatment of illegal immigrants. In 2009, after Pres. Obama stepped into office, Wilson changed to his current position opposing public funds for healthcare of illegal immigrants.

The Prostate Net will host a daylong, dual-track educational symposium targeting patients, caregivers and medical professionals on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at New York University, Kimmel Center for University Life in New York City. (http://theprostatenet.org/Symposium.html)

Us TOO University Presents:
Estrogen Deficiency Side Effects Due to Androgen Deprivation Therapy.

This free webinar/teleconference with speaker Samir Taneja MD will
take place Wednesday, September 23, 2009, at 8pm Eastern,
7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, 5pm Pacific.

For more information and to RSVP today, go to:
http://www.ustooevents.org/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=2700

Dr. Robert Getzenberg, research director at Johns Hopkins Brady Urological Institute, said this morning that the EPCA-2 prostate cancer blood test is moving ahead and the law suit filed against him and the University of Pittsburgh is “for money.”

We spoke with Dr. Getzenberg by phone at 9.50 this morning after leaving a message yesterday with his staff. He returned the call from his Johns Hopkins office, sounding up-beat.

“The science remains the same,” Getzenberg said about the progress of the EPCA-2 prostate cancer diagnostic test. “Everything is solid.”

Dr. Robert H. Getzenberg, a leading University of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins cancer researcher who claims to have developed superior new blood tests to detect prostate cancer, colon cancer, and bladder cancer has been accused of making false claims over a period of years and selling these false claims to keep his laboratory working.

Onconome, Inc. a biotechnology company, earlier this month filed an action in Federal court charging that from 2001 to 2005 the University of Pittsburgh and one of its researchers, Dr. Robert H. Getzenberg, committed scientific research fraud and breach of contract.

Dr. Getzenberg has also worked at Johns Hopkins, a leading US center for treatment of prostate cancer and other urological diseases.

Dr. Getzenberg’s best-known scientific project is the EPCA-2 biomarker, a discovery claimed to detect prostate cancer better than the currently used PSA blood test.

Ohio scientists have demonstrated that diesel exhaust induces the growth of new blood vessels that send blood to supply to solid tumors. This is the first evidence of how exposure to diesel fumes can cause cancer.

The researchers found that more new blood vessels sprouted in mice exposed to diesel exhaust than did in mice exposed to clean, filtered air. The same changes happened in both healthy mice and in sick animals. This suggests, the scientists say, that previous illness isn’t required to make humans susceptible to the damaging effects of the diesel exhaust.

Libya’s most prominent prostate cancer patient, Abdelbasset al Megrahi, convicted as the “Lockerbie bomber,” and released on compassionate grounds of his illness, either is or is not in an intensive care unit.

Megrahi served eight years of a life sentence for the murder of 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Some relatives of British victims and some political commentators believe that Megrahi was a fall guy for Syrian involvement. At the same time outrage is swirling over a perceived exchange of Megrahi for renewal of UK interest in Libyan oil.

Is Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the convicted and now released Lockerbie bomber, really on the brink of dying of prostate cancer? Official letters about his release from prison in Scotland omit his medical records. These records remain sealed.

According to a Libyan official Mr Megrahi, age 57, “is a dying man.” Libyan Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Sialam, told reporters that al-Megrahi is in worsening condition and is not expected to survive much longer.

At home in Tripoli, over the weekend he was rushed to hospital. A British TV team was invited in to film him in his private room. Fluorescent light turns greenish on TV and he looks quite ill. Channel 4 (UK)’s Jonathan Miller says “It looked to me as though Abdel Basset al-Megrahi wasn’t long for this world.” But a vital signs monitor, which looks only half half hooked-up, shows his heart rate within normal range.

Updated Sept 1 2009 at Lockerbie Bomber Megrahi Hospitalized for Prostate Cancer